We all have unfulfilled promises and prophecies in our bags. Some out of the Many are in our bags for years. Waited for years, prayed and fasted about it, tried bribing God by giving lot of money as offerings but still no sign of the promise coming to pass. Promise of Marriage? Prophecy about your Call and Ministry? Promise of a Child? Prophecy about a Shift in your life? Healing? Freedom? Deliverance? and list goes on. You have held onto His promises and have not seen it come pass, You have dreamed about the prophecies that were spoken over your life but nothing seems to happen beyond your dreams. It is time to know Why and When you know Why, there will be twist in your life story.

Why does GOD delay the fulfillment of His Promises, Prophecies?:- A question playing over and over again in the minds of many Christians is this. If you ask me this question, I will ask you to make changes to your question because your question is wrong. The problem is NEVER on God’s side of the equation. God is a Good Dad and He is always working for our Good. God is not withholding Good from you and if His promises coming pass are going to do you good, then He will be first on line to make it happen.Think about this…He gave Jesus for you, won’t give other things to you. Jesus, the most treasured possession in Heaven, was given as a sacrifice for your salvation. If God gave you Jesus, then He will give you everything else is a logical conclusion.

We know that in everything God works for the good of those who love him. Romans 8:28(NCV)

Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else?. Romans 8:32(NLT)

You have to get this carved in your heart and mind-“THE PROBLEM IS NEVER ON GOD’S SIDE OF THE EQUATION, IT IS ALWAYS ON OUR SIDE”.

Detecting the Bug that is causing the delay:-

A story from the Past:-
The People of Israel were stuck in Egypt with a yuck life. God had promised that He will give them Canaan, the Promised land. According to His Promise, He sent Moses to get the people out of Egypt and lead them into Canaan. Everything was going as per plan until the people of Israel started messing things up. You would have heard of a statement that goes-“You can’t create a mess, God can’t clean” but at that instance God was not able to clean the mess. He did later but at the present, the promise got delayed because the people messed up really bad.

God performed signs and wonders, destroyed their enemies, guided them and took good care of them yet they chose to doubt and grumble against God. God was working in shifts to get them into the Promised land but they didn’t enter BECAUSE OF WHAT THEY DID. Who gave the Promise? God. Who brought them out? God. Who led them towards the Promised land? God. Who got hurt that the people didn’t cooperate with Him and receive the Promise? God. Who is to be blamed? Everyone else except God. God was working for their Good but they worked against His work and missed the Good they had to receive.

So we see that they were not able to enter [into His rest—the promised land] because of unbelief and an unwillingness to trust in God. Hebrews 3:19(AMP)

A story from the Present:-
Few days back, I was praying and moving around in my room. It was midnight and I had to stay awake to keep an eye on my new born. I was suddenly led to my Library, led to a book I have not read yet, led to open the introduction and read a particular portion in it. I read the portion, placed the book in it’s place, came back without reading further. This is what I got…The Author received a prophetic word that He will have an encounter with God in October. October came and left, nothing happened. Time kept going like a bullet train and he got frustrated.

One day, He went to God and asked the most famous question-“WHY?”. God answered-“Because you were too Busy to receive”. He repented immediately, got out of busyness and the prophetic word came to pass. See, God has a schedule. He has a time plan. That doesn’t mean it just happens, you can run behind God’s time. God’s time was October but the Man of God missed it because of His busyness. Israelites could have walked into the Promised land just like that as per God’s time plan but it got delayed and they ended up spending the summer in the wilderness, 40 years of wandering was the result.

Debugging the Bugs that delay promises and prophecies:
The Bugs that keep us from receiving God’s promises and prophecies are not in God or on the outside but on the inside. You are standing between you and the fulfillment of God’s promise. You are the Bug or You have the Bug, that is stopping you from receiving from God. You are too Busy to receive like the Man of God or you are walking in unbelief and expecting a promise to come to pass like the Israelites, whatever it maybe, always look inside to experience a change. Your breakthrough is nowhere to be seen because you are expecting everything outside you to change and not taking any step to bring a change in you. If God gave you a date and nothing happened, don’t look up, look in.

God has the power to do what He has promised and He is always working for your good, the problem is in you. It can be unbelief , busyness, laziness, immaturity, fear or whatever, that is stopping you from receiving and all these are Faith killers. Faith activates the promises of God and having a faith killer in your life can keep the promises from coming to pass. Don’t ever blame God or question God. Believing, then checking whether God has done it and starting to doubt is not Faith. Faith always comes with His twin partner, Perseverance. Faith means believing and believing and believing no matter what happens, no matter how long it takes. If you keep jumping from Faith to doubt, Faith to fear you won’t receive anything.

We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised. Hebrews 6:12(NIV)- (Patience in this verse is not waiting passively for something to happen but it means to actively standing in faith ignoring contradictory situations and never moving out of faith.

But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.Such a person is double-minded andunstable in all they do. James 1:6-8(NIV)

Don’t forget Your Enemy:-
The devil is your enemy and He is always working against you. God is always working for your good and the devil is always working against your good. But the devil can access your life only if you open a door to him. You don’t have impress God with tears filled prayers and long fasting to make him do what He promised, You have to resist the devil and push him back.Daniel prayed, God answered but the answer got delayed because of demonic resistance. Getting it??…You don’t have to bang on Heaven’s door because Heaven is on your side, you have to bham the demonic forces that are working against you.

The Element of Time in Promises and Prophecies:-
There is a God time for certain promises and prophecies. The fulfillment of these promises are depended on time reaching its fulfillment. The Prophecy about you being a Leader in the Kingdom is not going to happen over night. You becoming a Leader before you become mature will kill you. The promise of a beautiful marriage won’t happen while your still in your diapers.These kind of promises are exceptions but not all promises are time based because lot of things have been settled by the finished work of Jesus. On the other hand, you don’t have to wait to have a child saying-“God is making me wait like Abraham”, believe and receive. God designed man to reproduce, you don’t have to wait because you are not Abraham.

As a Child of God, you are already blessed in Christ. You just have to take what belongs to you in Christ. You don’t have to wait for healing to manifest, you don’t have to wait to receive your freedom from sin, you don’t have to lose multiple interviews to crack one because you are a New Creation filled with the ability of God. Everything that is part of the redemption work of Jesus is a done deal, you don’t have to wait for years to receive them. They are available for you, you just have to take them.

Many don’t receive their promises because they place the element of time over everything.“God will heal me in his time”, “God is teaching me something through this problem, that is why He is delaying”, “God will set me free, Bless my family in His time till then I have to go through all this”, “I don’t have a child. God will give me a child in His time like He did for Abraham” are statements that kill faith and keep your promises from coming to pass.

What Now? You can delay the promises of God. You can grumble and doubt like the Israelites or Be Busy like the Man of God or Have some other Faith killer in your life. God is always working for your Good, cooperate with Him. Don’t blame God. Resist the devil and push back because he works extra hours to prevent promises from coming to pass. Time element applies to certain promises alone, don’t place it over everything and sit like a duck doing nothing. Just believe. Let me finish with this verse:-